“The Court of Appeal reaffirmed that "unit" in Article IV rule 5 of the Hague Visby Rules means a physical item and that "enumeration... as packed" means no more than specification in words or figures of the number of packages. Therefore, the first instance judge correctly concluded that the specification on the bills (in this case, waybills) was such that identified individual frozen tuna loins as the relevant units.”

“Although the conduct of a judge in meeting one party's Counsel in private and discussing elements of the case was considered "inept", the Court of Appeal found that on the basis of the relevant facts a fair-minded observer would not conclude that the judge's inappropriate conduct could indicate any possibility that he was biased. No submissions were made privately by the Counsel, all the judge's comments were communicated to the other party and the innocuous nature of the conversation gave rise to no inference that the judge would decide the case other than impartially.”

“The Court of Appeal confirmed that the word "unit" in Article IV Rule 5 of the Hague Rules means a physical item and not a unit of measurement. Therefore, the Hague Rules limitation of liability cannot apply to bulk cargoes (in this case a fish oil cargo) and the carrier could not limit its liability to the (uncontested) amount of £100 per ton. Nor was the carrier assisted by a charterparty term conferring on it "the like privileges and rights and immunities" as Article IV. Without more, this only conferred the same rights as the carrier would have had under Article IV and no more.”

“Following an engine room fire in August 2012, it was not until February 2013 that ship-owners sought to abandon their vessel to Underwriters and claim a CTL. The Court of Appeal confirmed the High Court ruling that despite the delay, the owners had not lost the right to abandon or declare a CTL. Widely divergent repair estimates had been in play and it was legitimate to include in the repair figures costs incurred between incident and Notice of Abandonment and SCOPIC remuneration.”

“In interpreting the meaning of the word "act" in clause 8(d) of the ICA (apportionment of liability on a 50-50% basis unless the claim arose out of the act or neglect of one of the parties), the Court of Appeal held that clause 8 is concerned with causation rather than culpability. The critical question is: does the claim "in fact" arise out of the act, operation or state of affairs described? It does not depend upon legal or moral culpability. In the present case, prolonged stay at anchor damaged the cargo and Charterers had to share liability irrespective of whether ordering the vessel to wait at anchor was culpable or not.”

“In this most unusual case, service of a notice of arbitration on a party's agent was deemed valid, the agent having implied and ostensible authority to accept such service, because the principal took "no part, no role and no interest in the negotiation or performance" of the contract.”